Internet usage in Africa is increasing, with Lisbon, London and Madrid emerging as new connection hubs for West Africa and Marseille serving as a hub for the continent's East Coast, as users seek lower latency.
A senior executive at DE-CIX, which operates carrier- and data-center-neutral Internet exchanges across Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia, said this.
In an interview with ITWeb Africa this week, Darwin da Costa, business development manager for DE-CIX, stated that data centres, data localisation, the adoption of artificial intelligence, and the coming online of more populous countries with low connectivity, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, are all driving Africa's appetite for internet consumption.
He explained: “There is a lot of appetite when it comes to traffic consumption in Africa now. In short, connecting the continent is dividing into two; on the West coast, their connection is mostly going through Portugal, Spain, and London, and then on the east coast, they go mainly to Marseilles or ending up in Frankfurt, Germany. We are seeing that internet bandwidth for Africa is growing more or less 40, 50% over the past five years.
“There is a more need to have more metropolitan networks and there is a need for routing policies to connect local nodes, local internet exchanges and also to be using peeling routes to upstream providers.”
Costa stated that both fibre and satellite connectivity were important options for African users.
Satellite providers such as Starlink, which has been broadening out across the continent, are connecting places that are not serviced by fibre internet.
“If you are in Africa and you cannot get fiber everywhere, you're definitely going to need satellites, especially for the farmers and other remote users. If those not served by fibre need to upload data the cloud whatever usage they are going to rely on the satellite.
“Let’s not underrate the satellite because the latency on SpaceX, for example, is also very promising,” he said.
Angola Cables, a bandwidth reseller, agrees that internet consumption in Africa is increasing.
Angola Cables global heard of marketing, Samuel Carvalho, said: “We are seeing that internet bandwidth for Africa is growing more or less 40, 50% over the past five years. There is a more need to have more metropolitan networks and there is a need for routing policies to connect local nodes, local internet exchanges and also to be using peering routes to upstream providers.”
Despite the expanding data usage and multiplicity of connectivity options, power supply constraints are holding back some of the potential. Various countries in Africa such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria and others suffer chronic power outages.
Costa believes that Africa “requires lots of energy in Africa” to feed into internet exchanges, data centers and ground stations that help satellite internet providers lower latency.
Analysts anticipate countries with reliable electricity supplies will become hotspots for carrier-neutral data centres, although operators are increasingly moving to renewable energy sources.
Share